I Made a Photo Book about NYC's Original Artist Lofts

[Music] yeah hi my name is Josh chero I'm a photographer and I'm making a book on the last generation of artists protected by the 1982 laugh law I saw this building might have coverage so I wanted to see are you by any chance one of those tenants Soho was once the epicenter of manufacturing in New York however globalization in the 1950s left hundreds of these cast iron buildings empty the only people willing to write the lofs for artists they had no heat no electricity and no Plumbing but they had tall ceilings and huge Windows it was illegal to live in these spaces but the landlords in the city looked the other way for many years because they were making money and they were Reinventing a neighborhood that they thought had no future I moved in September 77 you can't imagine at night time there were no street lights the uh the businesses were uh folding up there were empty buildings on on the corners most of them I'm 96 years old when I moved here the bowy was a much different place than it is now I think the rent was 300 bucks when I got here and even that was difficult this whole area was just completely a No Man's Land it was very industrial there was something about it that uh captured the imagination the early Loft tenants in the 50s and 60s would traditionally get a 5 or 10 year lease and do most of the fixturing it was raw space let's say 1964 to 1974 come 1973 197 really 1974 the landler comes in and says wow this is fabulous what you've done here is great get out between the Intrigue of Loft living and the finite number of Loft buildings um there was nowhere else to move so at that point people decided to [Music] fight I think a lot about how an artist interacts with their space that space becomes who they are all these artists organized save our Loft and we went up to Albany one day rented two fullsize buses and uh went up there and went office to office talking to people I went up with stroller making my kids up there to spend the day lobbying uh the politicians to tell them how important it was and in June of 1982 The Loft law was adopted at the time there was said to be tens of thousands of artists living in Lofts across New York City today there are only a few hundred left under the original Loft law Loft law was in flux for 30 years from day to day we never knew whether we would be able to stay was not a secure situation and it's still not secure you know what the hell I'm going to get rid of it for it's it's huge it's fantastic I mean I've got everything here I I need to to work I don't know if I'd be in the art you know I may have left I may have stopped being an artist I mean there's so many people that stop being an artist at a certain point because it's just too hard it's too hard to find time for it if you have to have a full-time job to pay rent and expenses New York City is so rare and unique in this way because it has these buildings and it has these people it's the people that are able to stay here and to stay in these spaces that otherwise would never have this chance and this opportunity it gives New York its character it's the makeup of of why New York is such an interesting place [Music]

Channel: Joshua Charow

Views: 249,599

Keywords: NYC, Photography, Artist Lofts, Apartment Tour, New York City

Id: vRwdfExcdnc

Length: 4min 4sec (244 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 30 2024